'Long Live Benedict XVI!! Down with heresy!!'

A souvernir shop in Bavaria, southern Germany, sells candles with a photo of the new Pope· Toby Manhire, deputy editor, the Editor

Quicker than you could say habemus papam, debate about the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI - aka Benny, aka B16 - swept the blogosphere. "The liberal cafeteria Catholic's worst nightmare has come true," wrote Philip Blosser of Cardinal Ratzinger's victory at his blog (a finalist in the "Catholic blog awards 2005 - most intellectual", no less). "The Panzerkardinal, the Grand Inquisitor himself, has come to the papal throne."

There are already a clutch of weblogs devoted to the new pontiff. Pick of the bunch is popebenedict16, edited by the Catholic writer Michael S Rose. It offered links to scores of articles about the new pope. Reader comments on the site have yet to scale the heights, however. A sample post: "Long Live Benedict XVI!! Down with heresy!!!"

Over at another new blog, B-16, one of the pressing concerns was "trying to come up with chants". Explained the weblog editor: "'JP2, we love you,' has served well for a number of years. Now we have to think of good slogans for B16."

Not surprisingly, joy was unconfined in the forums of ratzingerfanclub.com, a five-year-old website that, as many posters noted, was now ready for a name-change. It was "fantastic news"; Catholics were "ecstatic". There was one dissenting view, however. "Sad, sad, sad," said that correspondent. "The church that should open up even more … continues to push people away, closes behind a purist … who has such a strong dogma that will neither convince those who begin to doubt nor convert those who have always doubted."

Andrew Sullivan was of similar mind on his Daily Dish weblog. It was an "insular and regressive choice", said Sullivan. It quashed hopes of the church revising its "peripheral doctrines on human sexuality or even how to run the church (celibacy, women priests, etc)." Instead, things were likely to get worse: "They simply could not have picked a more extreme candidate."

Oswald Sobrino, writing in his blog, Catholic Analysis, couldn't agree less. Cardinal Ratzinger was just the man to pursue the "urgent matter of opening the mind of a secular world that accepts with a shrug much moral evil: abortion, killing the disabled, and sexual chaos", he wrote.

For Mark Shea, at Catholic and Enjoying It, bloggers' reaction had been premature. "We should wait until the pontificate of Benedict XVI is more than six hours old to either declare the coming of the Millennium or the End of the World as We Know it," he advised. "Personally, I think that those who are elated and those who are having hysterics are probably in for some surprises. I also think that, once people get to know the guy, they will be pleasantly surprised."